From the June Mastering CorelDRAW newsletter

Amazing Text Features

Daniel Will-Harris

Text handling. Sounds kind of touchy-feely, doesnt it? Well, it is and it 
isnt, depending on how you use it. Sometimes the less touchy-feely, the 
faster and more productive you can be - and the more design variations 
you can try in less time.
	To get the most out of text handling, youre going to need to 
master two of Draw 4s new features: styles and linked text boxes.
	When I was creating the templates that ship with Draw 4, I had to 
start designing them in 3. While it was possible to create documents with 
a lot of text in 3, you obviously were limited to a single page per file and 
your text all had to be in separate blocks that didnt flow when you 
edited them - in other words, long text handling was possible, but not 
probable.
	But Draw 4 really changes all that and makes it possible to create 
multi-page publications - even text-heavy newsletters - with relative 
ease, as long as you take advantage of styles and linked text boxes. 
Relative is the key word here, because Draws long text handling still has 
some basic limitations and rough edges.

Style Power
Styles are nothing new; word processors and page layout programs have 
had them for years. But it always surprises me how few people actually 
take advantage of them.
	Just in case youre not familiar with the concept of styles, here it is 
in a nutshell: Paragraph text styles contain all the formatting specs for 
type, things like typeface, size, fill and outline color, leading, paragraph 
spacing, justification, tabs, indents, bullets and hyphenation. Artistic text 
styles are the same, with the exception of tabs, indents, bullets, and 
hyphenation, as well as the addition of some effects, like perspective. 
(There are also Graphics styles, applicable to drawn objects.) 
	The power of styles is two-fold, (or three fold, if youre doing a 
flyer). First, styles help you format your pages quickly; you dont have to 
set text attributes manually for each paragraph - just select a style and 
apply it. You can apply styles to individual paragraphs, or entire 
Paragraph text blocks.
	Second, styles help make your text more consistent - you wont 
accidentally have one paragraph of body text in a different typeface or 
size, or with different leading. Styles ensure that you maintain 
consistency in your type specs, and that makes your pages cleaner and 
more professional. It also helps when youre working with color to 
ensure that you are only using the colors you specifically wanted in the 
piece. Third, (I guess were onto the three-fold here...) styles allow you 
to make major changes or corrections in seconds (or minutes on slower 
machines). Without styles the same tasks can take you hours.
	Fourth, (aha, a surprise) styles actually give you more creative 
freedom. Hows that possible? Because styles are the perfect "what if" 
tool - they let you change the formatting of all your body text or 
headings in one swell foop. So you spend less time formatting, and more 
time trying out variations and finding the one that works best.
	Theres an added bonus, too. If you change typefaces or sizes 
directly, using the Text roll-up or the Edit Text dialog box, bolds, italics 
and other attributes go right out the old window (I dont know if its 
supposed to work this way or whether it just does, but it doesnt much 
matter). However, if you change the face or size using styles, the other 
attributes are left intact. So styles are much more efficient in every way.

Nothings Perfect
Now, Ive got to be perfectly honest: Draw 4s text handling isnt 
perfect. First, it still has pretty crude justification - you cant add 
letterspacing and you cant control space size. Next, while styles are 
powerful, they can also be powerful slow. Updating a style on a four-
page document can take several minutes, even on a 486.
	And there are two things even more serious: Unstyled text can be 
very dangerous when you update the Default Paragraph text style because 
the text will update using the new default attributes and change your 
layout unexpectedly. Its not a pretty sight.
	Another problem: Undo! Undo doesnt always undo all style changes 
- you may find that after an undo your text isnt formatted exactly as it 
was.
	Most serious of all: Dont use the "Default" styles. Default 
styles are always overwritten by the settings in the current 
CORELDRW.CDT (the file that holds defaults between sessions.) This 
doesnt make much sense to me, but this is how the program is designed 
to work.
	Because of this, its imperative that you create your own Paragraph 
and Artistic styles, because if you use the default ones youll have to 
update them manually each time you open a file, and this means nothing 
but wasted time and unexpected changes.
	My own templates are designed using the default styles, because 
this feature was changed late after the templates were completed. This 
means you must update the default styles each time you open the 
templates.

Linked Text Boxes	
Linking provides a way to flow text through more than one Paragraph 
text frame. While not covered much in the manual, this feature is 
essential to handling long blocks of text. You connect text boxes by 
clicking on the empty little box at the bottom of a text frame and either 
dragging to draw a new text frame, or clicking inside an existing text 
frame. Once linked, therell be a + sign in the bottom of the text frame 
youre linking from and one in the top of the frame youre linking to.
	If the existing one has text, that text will be placed at the end of 
the linked text flow. When you import text using File Import, a new text 
frame is always created, and if the text file is large then additional frames 
and pages are created and automatically linked.
	Once linked, the only way to break the link is to delete the text 
box. Deleting the box doesnt delete the text, just the box. If you delete 
a box that is linked on the top and bottom, the link will remain from the 
box above it to the box below it.
	When you edit text in a linked box, the outlines of all the text 
boxes in the link will be displayed. The more text you have linked, the 
longer it will take to make editing changes.
	You can select text in several boxes at once by placing the cursor at 
the top of the first linked box and dragging it to the end of the last box. 
Youll then see all the text highlighted. You can even link into and out of 
enveloped Paragraph text boxes (what a segue!).

Enveloped Text - Inside and Around
Text inside an irregular shape: You can place text inside any shape, not 
just those that are listed in the Add Preset list (choose Envelope Roll-Up 
from the Effects menu to display this.) If youre working with a block of 
text that isnt square, choosing something like a circle will give you an 
oval. Rather than trying to make the text block the right shape, create 
the shape you want and use Create From. Youll find that Create From is 
actually the fastest way to get exactly the shape and size you want.
Text around any shape: If you want to wrap text around another 
object, click on the Paragraph text you want to wrap and select Add 
New from the Envelope roll-up. An envelope box will appear the same 
size as the frame, and you can use the standard node-editing tools to 
change its shape and create a wrap. Youre really putting text inside this 
irregular object in order to wrap it. Its not fast, its not easy, but it 
works.
	Big Warning: Text inside an irregular path has one gigantic, silly, 
inconvenient drawback: Enveloped text cant be edited directly on-
screen. Youve got to use the Edit Text dialog box, and if youve used 
that lately, you know it will only display one paragraph at a time. The 
result: Theres absolutely no way to combine two paragraphs once 
youve enveloped except to clear the envelope, edit the text, then create 
the envelope again. This is a real pain - so the best route is to always 
create an object from which to Copy From. You can set the outline and 
fill to None so it wont print, and you can then use this pattern to 
recreate the envelope if you have to remove it for text editing. It takes 
no longer to work this way, and it can save a lot of time.
	Long Text Tips: If youre bringing text in from another program 
and you want bold, italic and other attributes to be saved, import the 
text by choosing Import from the File menu. Cutting to the Clipboard 
from some word processing programs loses attributes and adds 
unnecessary returns. However, if youre using Word for Windows, you 
can also choose Paste Special from the Edit menu and select Rich Text 
Format to paste while maintaining text attributes. Strangely, Draw itself 
does not support RTF: When you cut and paste text in Draw, you lose 
all formatting.
	Speed Tip: Choose Special from the Preferences menu and click 
on the Display button to set the greeking value. The larger the number 
you set, the more text that will be greeked, and the more text thats 
greeked, the faster you can work on the main layout (but obviously not 
the text).
	So there you have it - many different ways to make text handling 
faster and easier. 
	
Daniel Will-Harris, designer and editor, is the author of Dr. Daniels 
Windows Diet: A Fast Cure for your Slow Windows Pains. He also hosts a 
series of instructional videos on Corel Draw and other Windows 
programs. He may be reached via CompuServe at 73257,2606, via MCI 
Mail at DWILL-HARRIS, or at Box 1235, Point Reyes, CA 94956.

	Tip: Finding fonts with Mosaic 
	If you want to know what fonts are used in a Draw 4 file, all you 
have to do is run Mosaic. Click on the thumbnail of the file, then choose 
Get Info from the Edit menu. The box on the bottom will list the fonts 
used in the file. Two caveats: This only works on .CDR files, not CDTs; 
and DRAW 4 has the regrettable habit of including the Default style 
fonts in this list, even if they arent actually used in the file.


Contents Copyright Kazak Communications, 1993.


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